How can certain meats be cured for months without rotting? Same question for alcohol that’s been cured for decades?
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Alcohol is highly toxic to most microorganisms – it’s practically an aicd bath to them so high-proof booze is good indefinitely as long as you don’t let it evaporate.
Curing meats also involves making the environment hostile to microorganisms. Salt, smoke, heat, corrosive, no oxygen, no water – one or more conditions that prevent the growth of bacteria that would normally be feasting.
Remember that unlike you, bacteria have to spend their entire life cycle inside whatever they’re eating. Make that impossible and the food won’t spoil very easily.
Cured meats have usually been dried and salted. Microorganisms need water to live and grow; without it, the meat won’t rot. The salt mostly is there to help dry out the food, but it also helps kill microorganisms because cells require a specific salinity level and will die if it’s too high.
Alcohol doesn’t go bad because, well, it’s alcohol. Nothing is going to grow in a barrel of whiskey, you can even use it as a disinfectant in a pinch.
Wine, beer, and other lower ABV drinks can grow bacteria, however. To prevent this, wine is usually made quite acidic and sulphur dioxide is added. Beer has even less alcohol and *will* spoil, so it must be canned or bottled to preserve it for long periods of time. You usually don’t age beer.
The microorganisms that cause meat to rot require quite a lot of moisture to propagate. Curing meat in salt causes moisture to be extracted through osmosis, bringing the moisture level down and allowing meat to be aged without microorganisms breaking it down and causing rot. Modern curing processes also involve using nitrite or nitrate salts, which actively inhibit the growth of microorganisms. As for alcohol…it’s alcohol. Microorganisms can’t grow in it. That’s why you can put whiskey in a barrel for 20 years and it’ll come out just fine.
Rotting occurs when microorganisms get into food and start breaking it down.
Alcohol is toxic to most microbes, so alcoholic beverages will break down very slowly.
Meat is cured in a dry, cool environment where microbes grow very slowly. Also, many cured meats are salted, microbes have difficulting surviving too much salt.
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